What are they thinking? Student Conceptions about Important and Difficult Topics in Introductory Computer Science

Understanding student reasoning and identifying student misconceptions are important precursors to developing high quality pedagogical materials and approaches. In my work, I seek to build on prior work in the identification of important and difficult topics in computer science and in concept inventories that explore student reasoning about these topics. I wish to explore student reasoning and discover student misconceptions about important topics in introductory computer science, with the goal of informing the design and evaluation of interventions that improve teaching and learning of these topics. I present here a summary of my work to date: a deep review of related work including the selection of important and difficult topics in introductory computer science, the creation of an exploratory instrument, the conduct of an initial, exploratory study using that instrument, and an analysis of a selected subset of the responses. I present also my current plans in furtherance of my research goals: continued analysis of the responses to my initial study, the development of task-based interviews to gain clarification and deeper understanding of student reasoning and misconceptions, and the development and evaluation of interventions that both build on solid lines of students reasoning and address misconceptions.